65% counts as a landslide I guess. Much less of a landslide than in 2002 (82% vs 18%). Hoping this is the high point of the FN and not the direction politics in France are going to continue.

I don't know why people keep bringing this comparison up; FN has gone way way way left in the past 15 years, so much so that Jean-Marie Le Pen was/is critical of it (and was expelled from it). It's still a far-right party, but it's no longer the party of open Holocaust denial. So yes, it is more appealing than when it was that party; it still lost in a landslide to a party/person whose broadest appeal according to exit polls was that he was not Marine Le Pen. It's not like the same FN party of 15 years ago just gained (less than) 17 points in the polls. And of course it was also low voter turnout because a lot of leftists didn't want Macron either. I think you really have to squint to think any good came of this for FN.

Has the FN shifted, or has it expanded? AFAICT, they do not have much worries about their racist flange, there is no serious alternative hovering up their old-time hardliner voters. That suggest that their move is more a matter of PR management, than a genuine change of course.

Zamfir wrote:Has the FN shifted, or has it expanded? AFAICT, they do not have much worries about their racist flange, there is no serious alternative hovering up their old-time hardliner voters. That suggest that their move is more a matter of PR management, than a genuine change of course.

What else is election politics but PR? The FN has expanded by expelling a racist leader, distancing itself from its racist past and promising they were no longer that party, and opening its arms to disaffected right-wing people who would reject an openly racist party. I would say it is a considerably more sincere turn than anything we have seen from American Republicans (e.g. "compassionate conservatives"). I would say it's expanded by moving enough to the left to appeal to voters who would have voted for center-right parties, and thus they are up in the polls from when they had a candidate who denied the holocaust. It shouldn't be shocking, especially with the major parties in France blocked from this final round

Also, this was an election between a centrist candidate who formed his own party that has zero other government members (effectively running as an independent) and a right-wing candidate, partly because of scandals and partly because recent leftist leadership in France has fallen down. It is likely that this result reflects much of the left in France staying home (as also noted by a dip in poll numbers), thus also explaining the wider margin of victory compared to 2002. I think there are way too many factors influencing this to think of it as "the rise of the right-wing in France", and given that it is really a victory (especially in the context of the doomsaying many on the left have been engaging in WRT this election), I am concerned about people on the left choosing to take away a gloomy forecast rather than taking a moment to celebrate an electoral victory over fascism.

I wouldn't call a lot of Front National's lukewarm supporters "right-wing" so much as "anti-immigration/Islam". Le Pen did get something around 1/3 of gay voters, because of the fear that Muslim immigrants would be worse for French gays than FN. It's up for debate how many of those supporters don't like the more fundamentalist aspects of Islam taking hold in France versus just hating Muslims in general.

Maybe not "right wing people" but certainly "people voting in response to right wing sentiments." I don't really differentiate between "illegitimately afraid of Muslims" and "actively hostile to Muslims". Yoda, etc.

The average poll conducted in the final two weeks of the campaign gave Macron a far smaller lead (22 percentage points) than he ended up winning by (32 points), for a 10-point miss. In the eight previous presidential election runoffs, dating back to 1969, the average poll missed the margin between the first- and second-place finishers by only 3.9 points.

Please consider the margin

No one was that “shy”

I'm surprised how inaccurate polling is in Europe. A 10 point polling miss is crazy. Does anyone still believe in shy voters? I haven't heard it in a while.

Zohar wrote:I don't know about those cases, but gay men are also the most entitled group in the LGBTQ community, and many will very willingly throw other minority groups under the bus.

In the absence of hard data I disagree. Other groups have been well known in the community to throw gay men under the bus for their own causes, and even right us out of history

(and as CorruptUser points out, intersectionality is complex and a lot of things that are said in the absence of good evidence assume a hierarchy of queer oppression with gay men at the top as "least oppressed" or something, and the data don't bear that out)

Everything We Know About Salt May Be Wrong. f you eat a lot of salt — sodium chloride — you will become thirsty and drink water, diluting your blood enough to maintain the proper concentration of sodium. Ultimately you will excrete much of the excess salt and water in urine.The theory is intuitive and simple. And it may be completely wrong. The findings have stunned kidney specialists.“This is just very novel and fascinating,” said Dr. Melanie Hoenig, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “The work was meticulously done.” Instead of drinking more, the crew were drinking less in the long run when getting more salt. So where was the excreted water coming from?“There was only one way to explain this phenomenon,” Dr. Titze said. “The body most likely had generated or produced water when salt intake was high.”Another puzzle: The crew complained that they were always hungry on the high-salt diet. Dr. Titze assured them that they were getting exactly enough food to maintain their weights, and were eating the same amount on the lower-salt diets, when hunger did not seem to be problem.But urine tests suggested another explanation. The crew members were increasing production of glucocorticoid hormones, which influence both metabolism and immune function.

This is a revolutionary study, or total bs. The data looks very solid though. The conclusions, if true, would reverse general understanding of what salt does in the body. The part about humans breaking down fat to free up water was pretty cool. I thought humans couldn't generate enough water to even delay drinking/thirst.

Still, Dr. Titze said he would not advise eating a lot of salt to lose weight. If his results are correct, more salt will make you hungrier in the long run, so you would have to be sure you did not eat more food to make up for the extra calories burned.

And, Dr. Titze said, high glucocorticoid levels are linked to such conditions as osteoporosis, muscle loss, Type 2 diabetes and other metabolic problems.

But what about liquids? Everyone knows that salty foods make you thirsty. How could it be that a high-salt diet made the cosmonauts less thirsty?

In reality, said Dr. Zeidel, people and animals get thirsty because salt-detecting neurons in the mouth stimulate an urge to drink. This kind of “thirst” may have nothing to do with the body’s actual need for water.

These findings have opened up an array of puzzling questions, experts said.

“The work suggests that we really do not understand the effect of sodium chloride on the body,” said Dr. Hoenig.

“These effects may be far more complex and far-reaching than the relatively simple laws that dictate movement of fluid, based on pressures and particles.”

She and others have not abandoned their conviction that high-salt diets can raise blood pressure in some people.

But now, Dr. Hoenig said, “I suspect that when it comes to the adverse effects of high sodium intake, we are right for all the wrong reasons.”

Crabtree's bludgeon: “no set of mutually inconsistent observations can exist for which some human intellect cannot conceive a coherent explanation, however complicated”

If it increases hunger, I doubt that (without maintaining the same 'sufficient' diet) it will be good for weight loss. You would eat more because your body tells you to. More even than the "oh look, fresh mammoth meat... Better eat it to get through the lean times.. !" mechanism that hasn't yet realised that mammoth meat is available morning, noon and night at the nearest McMammutidaes....

One of the gene knockout mouse models we use in the lab lacks the protein that accounts for 90% of the ability to taste salt in rodents (only 20-ish% in humans). They also weigh less. I've suspected for a while, since I found out about the salt-taste function (which is not why we're interested in it), that it's the main reason the knockout mice exhibit lower body weight. All the mice are provided food ad libitum.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

One of the gene knockout mouse models we use in the lab lacks the protein that accounts for 90% of the ability to taste salt in rodents (only 20-ish% in humans). They also weigh less. I've suspected for a while, since I found out about the salt-taste function (which is not why we're interested in it), that it's the main reason the knockout mice exhibit lower body weight. All the mice are provided food ad libitum.

But i assume their food is just as salty as that of the other mice? or do they prefer to prepare their meals with extra condiments?

Soupspoon wrote:If it increases hunger, I doubt that (without maintaining the same 'sufficient' diet) it will be good for weight loss. You would eat more because your body tells you to. More even than the "oh look, fresh mammoth meat... Better eat it to get through the lean times.. !" mechanism that hasn't yet realised that mammoth meat is available morning, noon and night at the nearest McMammutidaes....

The weight loss from salt is from the breakdown of fat (and muscle?) Is of note. Since it's a general breakdown which includes muscle, that means the body is spending energy to repair muscles as well. Which triggers hunger... too bad the paper doesn't show if the muscular breakdown can be combatted with exercise. Like if a salty diet with exercise would still cause loss of muscle strength or if you could lose fat and muscle while using exercise to limit muscle losses. Could be a diet. Or the effects are so small that it doesn't matter compared to caloric intake and exercise. It's Feedback loops under feedback loops all the way down :-\

You're gonna be waiting longer than that. This study was done on astronauts (cosmonaut in this case) in a controlled environment with their bodily intakes and outputs collected and measured. Most studies aren't anywhere close to this rigorous. The classical classroom of psychology ​students forced to take food recall journals comes to mind. Or worse, surveys about their habits weeks after it happened.

speising wrote:But i assume their food is just as salty as that of the other mice? or do they prefer to prepare their meals with extra condiments?

It's the same food, yeah (they're in the same cages as their wild-type littermates). My guess is that they just don't like food as much because it doesn't have that appealing salt taste. Not going to eat unless they're hungry, etc.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

CorruptUser wrote:So... obese people are more likely than average to have better sense of taste/smell? I'm now imagining the "gargle with novacain" diet.

Is this from the mouse study? I think you missed the part where they genetically removed the ability to taste salt, hence ate less. I suppose that obesity could be caused by greater sensitivity to salt. But you'd have to prove it causally instead of correlated.

Update: I forgot that the gene is overexpressed, not a knockout, and it's only overexpressed in lung tissue. So, my guess was off (the weight loss is probably related to the COPD symptoms they develop), but who knows, variations in that protein could play a role in ease of developing food addictions or something.

There's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.

CorruptUser wrote:So... obese people are more likely than average to have better sense of taste/smell? I'm now imagining the "gargle with novacain" diet.

Is this from the mouse study? I think you missed the part where they genetically removed the ability to taste salt, hence ate less. I suppose that obesity could be caused by greater sensitivity to salt. But you'd have to prove it causally instead of correlated.

Yes, and my numb in cheek conjecture is that if the mice were skinny because they couldn't taste salt, then having a better sense of taste (and smell) would result in eating more, and that somehow dulling these senses could work as a fad diet.

Obese subjects showed - compared to the control group - a significantly lower ability to identify the correct taste qualities regarding the total score (p<0.001). Regarding individual taste qualities there was a significantly lower detection rate for salty, umami and bitter by obese subjects. Furthermore, the determinants age and sex had a significant influence on taste perception: older age and female sex was associated with better ability to identify taste qualities. Concerning the sweet intensity rating obese children gave significantly lower intensity ratings to three of the four concentrations.CONCLUSIONS:

Obese and non-obese children and adolescents differ in their taste perception. Obese subjects could identify taste qualities less precisely than children and adolescents of normal weight.

British Broadcasting Corporation wrote:A Texas man has filed a lawsuit against a woman for the cost of a movie ticket after she texted during their cinema date. Brandon Vezmar, 37, said the woman walked out of the screening of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 when he complained about her persistent phone use. Mr Vezmar filed the petition in the state capital of Austin last week seeking $17.31 (£13.30), arguing his date's behaviour was "a threat to civilised society".

She said she refused to reimburse him because "he took me out on a date". "Oh my God," the unnamed woman told the Austin American-Statesman. "This is crazy."

Mr Vezmar said she began texting about 15 minutes after the movie began during their first date on 6 May. "It was kind of a first date from hell," he told the newspaper.

He said he asked her to stop and when she refused, Mr Vezmar suggested she should step outside to text. The woman left and did not return, he said. Mr Vezmar said he texted her a few days later to ask for the price of the ticket but she refused.

The woman said on Tuesday she only texted two or three times with her friend who was having a fight with her boyfriend. "I had my phone low and I wasn't bothering anybody," she said. …